What To Do If You Win a Judgment

You won your case in court and got your judgment. The time delay before
you can enforce the judgment has passed. You wrote the judment debtor a letter,
asking to be paid, and they did not respond. You called the debtor and
they laughed and hung up.

What to do with your judgment? Your choices are to enforce it yourself,
hire a lawyer, use a collection agency, or have a judgment enforcer
recover your judgment.

Recovering judgments requires too much paper and costs too much. When one
owns a judgment, they are responsible for keeping it renewed, monitoring
the debtor, and trying to enforce the judgment to get paid.

The owner of a judgment must fill out all paperwork and pay all fees.
Enforcing your judgment yourself is appealing because it gives you a
chance to recover most of what you are owed.

Should you recover your judgment yourself:

If you have the patience, money, time, and willingness to learn, you can
try enforcing your judgment yourself. This works best with stable debtors,
when you know where they work. Even then, it is not as easy or cheap as it
should be. One rarely recovers the full amount owed. The court and web sites
on the Internet will have hints and instructions about recovering your own
judgment.

When enforcing a judgment, one has to spend money to recover it, so one
usually does not get to keep the full amount they are owed.

When you have someone else fill out the forms, pay the fees, and do the
work to recover a judgment, you have to pay them - and give up part of
what they recover for you. If you are only spending money and not making
progress, giving up part of what is recovered can be appealing.

Using judgment enforcement assistance services:

There are companies that allow you to keep ownership of your judgment.
You pay only for the services you need, but do not want to do yourself.
These companies offer fixed-fee services including one fee for getting a
writ, another fee for doing a sheriff levy, etc. These companies have
their own process servers, and let you control everything while they do
the work. Of course,such services charge for their work, not for
the results, so you might spend with no money recovered.

Hiring a Lawyer:

If your debtor is rich, investigate using a lawyer. When hiring a lawyer,
you retain ownership of your judgment. If your judgment is less than
$10,000, it usually makes no sense to hire a lawyer. Even if your judgment
is more than $10,000, few lawyers work on contingency unless your debtor
is rich. Most of the time you must pay by the hour and also pay all the
expenses. If your lawyer is not working on contingency, you must pay by
the hour even for no results.

Using a Collection Agency:

When using a collection agency, you retain ownership of your judgment. If
your debtor is a solid upstanding citizen that will become upset by
letters, phone calls, and marks on their credit report, a collection
agency might make sense. Unlike a judgment enforcer, a collection agency
does not own your judgment, so they are limited in what actions they can
take to recover the judgment debt. Collection agencies usually charge
between 20 and 40 percent. If a year goes by with no recovery, perhaps
tell the collection agency to stop working on your judgment and try some
other ways to get your judgment enforced.

If one searches, they can find a new generation of collection agency that
does what a judgment enforcer does. They are pure contingency and never
charge a fee, so they charge 50% on most judgments.

Using a Judgment Enforcer:

When using a Judgment Enforcer (JE), you give up ownership of your
judgment. A JE steps into your shoes, in all matters related to recovering
money on your judgment. JEs must retain complete ownership of your
judgment while they are trying to enforce it.

Should you worry about giving up ownership to a JE who only gets paid
if they recover your money for you? Lots of judgment enforcers are flakes and some
are crooks, so I would use a judgment broker. :)

Will the JE give your judgment back if
you want it back? If the JE knows the judgment cannot be enforced, most
will gladly give you your judgment back. But if the JE is making (or soon
will make) progress, most JEs will not give it back. Instead they will pay
you your share as the money comes in from the debtor.

With a good (screened) judgment Enforcer (JE) you do not have to
spend any money, time,
thought, or work to recover money on your judgment. Because good JEs only get
paid for success, you know they will try to recover your money.